The Well Guide to Activity Trackers

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

How much do you move, sleep or do nothing at all? A crop of new activity trackers promises to collect data on your every move and offer new insights about your health.

We tested some of the latest and most popular trackers to compare how they work and the various features they offer. Here’s what we found. We’ll update this page regularly as new trackers and features are tested.

Basis released details of their new activity tracker, the Peak. It improves upon the B1 Band by tracking heart rate during exercise and adding some smartwatch like features.

Sept 9, 2014

Apple today announced their long-awaited smartwatch with a slew of fitness tracking features including a heart rate sensor.

Sept 4, 2014

Garmin is releasing a new twist on its Vivofit tracker, the Vivosmart, in mid-September with additional smartwatch like features but at a higher price of $169.99 and with only a seven day battery life.

June 23, 2014

Withings just announced a stylish new activity tracker watch, the Activité, that will sell for $390 this fall.

Jawbone Up 24

The Jawbone UP 24, and its predecessor the UP, is an activity and sleep tracker that looks like a bracelet.

It tracks your steps, active time and sleep, but more important, has a slew of smartly designed features that subtly nudge you to better habits. The inactivity alert can be set to vibrate and remind you to get up from your seat every so often — avoiding long stretches of sitting still. The sleep alarm will vibrate at a certain point in your sleep cycle for a less jarring wakeup.

Recently, Jawbone released an UP Coffee app that lets people log their caffeine consumption and see how that affects their sleep. The smartphone app lets you know if you’ve been particularly inactive or sleepless for several days in a row and provides personalized insights.

With its intelligent presentation of data and variety of useful features, the Jawbone UP is an excellent every day tracker.

Steps
Activity Time
SleepTracks the duration of light and deep sleep. Accurate sleep tracking requires pushing a button before bed and after waking up.

Photo courtesy of Garmin

Garmin Vivofit

Garmin, which is known best for its sports watches, is making its first foray into the daily activity tracker market with the Vivofit. Like other trackers, the Vivofit is a rubber band worn around the wrist that monitors steps and activity with an accelerometer.

Unlike most of its competition, the Vivofit is waterproof enough to swim with and uses a watch battery that Garmin claims can last longer than a year. The Vivofit can also be paired with one of Garmin's heart rate straps to record heart rate during a run or workout.

One downside is that compared to the smartphone apps for other trackers, the Garmin Connect app was slow and hard to use — it often took several tries to sync data. But the long battery life, waterproofing and use with a heart rate monitor still make it an appealing choice.

Steps
Activity Time
Heart RatePairs with a separate heart rate chest strap to record heart rate during an exercise session.
SleepSleep tracking requires pressing button for sleep mode before bed and after waking up.

Photo courtesy of FitBit

Fitbit Flex

The dinner-mint-sized Fitbit Flex can be dropped in a pocket or slipped into a rubber bracelet. Billed as water-resistant, it might survive a laundry-washing when you inevitably forget it in your pockets.

The Flex’s has a status of five LED lights in a thin band, vibrating once you meet your goal. Tapping the tracker reveals your current progress. A buttonless design helps with water-resistance but it also means the user has to sync it to the smartphone app or website (via USB antenna) to find out step counts, calories burned or floors climbed.

Steps
Activity Time
SleepTracks length and deepness of sleep. Accurate sleep tracking requires tapping to or from sleep mode before bed and after waking up.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Basis B1 Band

Out of all the trackers we looked at, the Basis Band has the most sensors crammed into it. In addition to an accelerometer for tracking movement, it fits a heart-rate sensor, skin- and ambient-temperature sensors and a perspiration sensor onto your wrist.

The Basis looks like a clunky digital watch. The screen is always on – unlike other trackers that require a button press to see the time.

The band will automatically detect when you're sleeping, walking, running or biking and log the length of time. Other trackers need you to push a button to turn "sleep mode" on and off.

However, bugs make this product feel very new. Updating your data takes a long time and frequently fails. More problematically, the heart-rate sensor stops recording exactly when data would be the most useful — when your heart rate is elevated from vigorous exercise.

In the past, new software updates have been released quickly that upgraded the Band with fixes and new features. This is one we're watching closely.

Misfit Shine

With its low-profile design, the Shine is the most easily hidden of the activity trackers. The hardware can attach to almost any article of clothing, including shoelaces, with a strong magnet. It also fits into a flimsy rubber watch band that can be worn on your wrist.

Additional accessories, such as a leather watch or a necklace are also available. Unlike most other trackers, it is powered by a watch battery, so there is no need to plug it in to recharge it every few days.

The Shine is best at keeping you motivated to meet daily personal minimum activity goals with "points" awarded for activity, while it calculates steps taken and calories burned. Tap it twice to check your progress, or sync it with the app on your phone for more detailed information about your activities.Because it doesn’t have to be worn on the wrist, it may be more accurate in tracking true physical activity, and not just wrist or arm movements. And because of its waterproof design, it can be used in the pool for swimming or water aerobics. At night, the Shine can help track duration and quality of sleep; just don't forget to unclip it from your bathing suit and onto your pajamas.

Withings Pulse O2

Withings started with an Internet-connected scale and seems on track to build a full suite of tracking devices. Its activity tracker, the Pulse, fits nicely into this ecosystem that now also includes a blood pressure cuff, sleep tracker, baby scale and monitor.

The Pulse is a tiny pill-shaped tracker that can be slipped into a pocket or worn on a clip. Like the Fitbit, it will tally the number of flights of stairs you've climbed. Its most unusual feature is the heart-rate and blood oxygenation sensor on the back. Hold your finger to it for a few seconds and it logs your current heart rate.

The Pulse tracks steps and activity well, unless you forget and leave it in your other pair of pants. The Withings app is well designed to present information from it along with their other products.

Steps
Activity Time
SleepWorn in a separate sleep wristband, it tracks length and fitfulness of sleep and length of REM sleep.
Heart RatePress your finger to back of the Pulse to get a heart rate measurement. It doesn't measure continuously.
SpO2Measures blood oxygenation level along with heart rate.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Nike Fuelband SE

Like other trackers, the FuelBand is worn around the wrist and tracks steps and activity with an accelerometer. What sets it apart is its visually striking design with colored lights and the "fuel" metric Nike uses for quantifying activity. When paired with Nike’s smartphone app, you can use it to record a "session" of a particular sport or exercise. All activity throughout the day and during a session is measured in terms of the number of fuel points earned. Nike then makes it easy to compare the number of fuel points you've earned with other friends through their Nike+ network.

Steps
Activity Time
Nike FuelNike's own unit for measuring activity level.
SleepSleep tracking must be activated through the app and only length of sleep is tracked.

Photo courtesy of BodyMedia

BodyMedia LINK Armband

BodyMedia has been around since 1999 making wearable body monitors that have been used by researchers doing clinical studies and on the NBC show "The Biggest Loser."

The armbands, which are worn on the upper arm and look more like medical devices than fashion accessories, pack in multiple sensors to track motion, perspiration, skin temperature and the amount of heat generated by your muscles. Of all the activity trackers, the Link appears to be the most accurate at tracking calories burned.

To track that data though, you have to pay for a $6.95-a-month subscription for the online activity manager. And that $6.95 a month interface for looking at what's been tracked is among the clunkiest and least intuitive to use of all the trackers we tested. And while the armband could be hidden under a long-sleeved shirt, it emitted chip-tune beeping noises at times.

The company was recently acquired by Jawbone, and it’s unclear how that will affect BodyMedia’s products.